Blogroll

This week there are three parts to the challenge.

Part 1is about your digital footprint where you need to visit Mr Bogush’s class blog to find out the activities to try. Remember to leave a comment on his post about the activity you completed and why you chose that activity. Then come back to this post on the student blogging challenge and leave a comment mentioning you have completed a week 4 activity so I can visit your blog to leave a comment.

Part 2 is about BAD14. Are you going to write a post, create a video or take part in Blog Action Day on 16th October? Remember the theme is Inequality. Check out this wordle for some topics you might want to research then write about. Publish your post on 16 October or if your teacher moderates first then publishes, make sure you have your post in early enough.

Part 3 is about commenting. Every time you write a post relating to the blogging challenge activities, remember to visit the appropriate challenge post and leave a comment. That way Miss W can visit your blog to read your post and leave a comment.

I noticed students and classes have started visiting each other and leaving some great comments. Many students have checked their spam folder to approve my welcome message. Students are leaving blog URL’s when leaving comments on kidblog posts.

WOW! Overall a great start to the 10th student blogging challenge.

This week you have freedom to choose what you write about. You might be very passionate about something and want to write a post on that topic. It might be:

minecraft

embroidery

a particular singer or band – dare I say One Direction

music

astronomy

collecting coins

book reviews

geology

travelling

history

genealogy – that would be my topic of passion

etc, etc, etc

Your choice! Make sure you introduce your topic, include a link to another website relating to that topic and if possible, a picture you have taken relating to your passion.

Now not everyone is passionate about something so I will include a few other choices you might like to post about.

Challenge about the number 10

If you had the freedom to choose 10 jobs you would have over your lifetime, what would they be and why?

Daniel also has some great tags and categories especially if you are a minecraft fan.

If using another blogging platform, check out the Get Help links on the right sidebar.

Adding great blogs to your blogroll

To make it easy for visitors to find the blogs of your classmates and friends you need to add their link on your blogroll.

If using Edublogs, in your dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across links or blogroll to your sidebar.

If you want to group your links, then use link categories. These might be ‘My classmates’, ‘Class blogs’, ‘Overseas friends’. You might also include links about your hobbies so you might need a category for ‘Cricket’ or ‘Tasmanian Devils’ or ‘Online Games’.

To create these link categories, go to dashboard> links> Link Categories> put in the name of a category and save.

Back to your dashboard> links> add new link. Fill in the name of the person, then under web address put in the URL of their blog. Remember to include the http:// part. Choose which category you want the link to be under then click add link.

Here is a post by Sue Waters to help with your blogroll or links – step by step instructions – check out parts 1 and 2

Last Sunday was Clean Up Australia Day. Do you have something similar in your country? What is it called? When is it on? Have you ever taken part? Write a post or create a Public Service Announcement about the event.

In less than two weeks, we will be taking part in Earth Hour. Have you signed up for it yet? What are some of the things you might do with your family for that one hour without lights? Click on this link for the Earth Hour page which immediately opens a video with audio.

Did you do anything special for these events that occurred earlier this year?

Chinese New Year

Mardi Gras

St Valentines day

Australia Day

World Read Aloud Day

Research one of these people who have celebrated a birthday earlier this year.

Amelia Earhart or Harold Gatty

Dr Seuss or Morris Gleitzman

Martin Luther King or Albert Jacka

Ben Franklin or Fiona Wood (Australia)

Christa McAuliffe or Crown Princess Mary (Mary Elizabeth Donaldson)

Mel Gibson or Neil Brian Davis

Leaving comments

Do you want to learn how to write a great comment and how to use some special code in your comments? Then check out this post written by Mrs Yollis’ class nearly three years ago – she includes how to leave a link in your comment. This comes in handy if you want to include the URL of your blog in a comment.

Make sure you are visiting other students and classes, especially those with similar interests to you. Maybe add them to your blogroll. Leave comments and ask questions on their posts. Try to use some of that special code from Mrs Yollis’ blog post.

Welcome to our second group of activities in the blogging challenge. Again three areas to improve in your blog, then some choices for posts for this week.

Improve your blog

Avatars

I notice many of our newer bloggers don’t have avatars yet. Visit this post where I explain how to create and upload your avatars. Click on one of the avatars to take you to the actual site. Maybe as a class you could then create a slideshow of the avatars you created. Or maybe you could create an avatar for each member of your family and put those in a slideshow. Which slideshow? Check out the Web tools to use on the right sidebar of this blog.

Blogroll

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other student blogs, you might start finding some blogs that you really like. You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL? This is where a blogroll comes in handy. If you look on the right sidebar of this blog, you will notice I have three subheadings such as:

Get Help

Web tools to use

Animals blogging

These are my blogroll. I can choose to have them in total (headings will then be in alphabetical order – see Miss T below), or just one category at a time.

Check out the blogroll categories from these students and classes: Kids in the Mid (left sidebar), Miss T (left), Mr Miller (right), Teegan (left, some are actually images as links too), Bree (far right)

To create the link category headings, go to your dashboard> links > link category You might include classmates, overseas friends, class blogs, get help and websites.

To make sure these appear on your sidebar, go to dashboard> appearance> widgets and drag the links or blogroll across to the sidebar area.

Add some links to your blogroll

To add some links such as the challenge blog and your friends’ blogs, go to your dashboard> links> add new. Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL. Be internet savvy and only use first names of students.

You might include at least 10 classmates, some overseas friends you have visited, Student Challenge Blog, The Edublogger, Help from Edublogs or kidblogs or weebly etc, your class/school blog and/or intranet and websites you often visit.

Here is a post by Sue Waters about creating a blogroll. Follow the instructions for Step 2 in her post.

Hyperlinking

You will notice in today’s challenge, I have included a lot of hyperlinks to other places to visit. If you do this in posts, you are showing your readers that you have researched the topic – you are not just writing about what your friends have told you or things you think you know. You can hyperlink in posts, pages and comments – handy if commenting on kidblog and you want to leave your blog URL.

write about your passions

You might want to start writing a series of posts about your passion. Remember your readers may know absolutely nothing about what you love, so start by explaining things well. Send them to other websites to get more information (called hyperlinking, which is one of the improve your blog activities for this week)

But a blog post or page is written in your words, so don’t copy and paste from other websites – always use your own words first and then send your visitors to other places on the internet to find out more.

Write a post, create a movie, find websites, create a slideshow, create a comic – there are infinite ways to present your passion.

If you know of a great tool to use, leave a comment below with a link to the tool URL in your comment.

Don’t know what to write about:

Visit these websites – look around them and write a post about some part that intrigued you.

An update first: we now have as at today 141 classes, over 1300 students and 44 mentors from 25 countries taking part in the 8th student blogging challenge. I hope you are all enjoying the activities and making the most of visiting other classes and students around the world.

In your profile, have you included your user name and your blog URL? Before leaving a comment on another blog that is the same platform as you eg Edublogs, Blogger, make sure you are signed into your blog. This way you won’t have to fill in lots of information when leaving a comment. Will also mean the owner of the blog you commented on will only have to click on your name or avatar and they will be directed straight to your blog.

As you visit and read other blogs, you might want to leave a comment and then add that blog to your blogroll or links. These are going to be the two things we look at this week in the challenge.

Blogging

What makes a good comment?

Check out this post and video from Mrs Yollis’ grade 3 students about how to write a quality comment.

Some comments you receive are actually spam – Nike shoes, handbags, essay dissertations etc Often these comments will have a link in them directing you to a website where they want you to buy something.

Other spam comments often have facebook.com or google.com or yahoo.com in the email address. Sometimes these comments make sense but they will often have a spelling error and they usually have nothing to do with the post you have written.

Make sure you don’t approve these type of comments but click spam instead.

Some people might leave a comment like ‘Wutsup?’ – this would go in the trash.

Some students who don’t know about quality comments might say ‘This is a cool blog. Please visit my blog at ……’ This would also go in the trash. Or maybe you visit their blog first and thank them for leaving a comment on yours but mention it was not acceptable as it didn’t relate to the post.

Adding great blogs to your blogroll

To make it easy for visitors to find the blogs of your classmates and friends you need to add their link on your blogroll.

If using Edublogs, in your dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across links or blogroll to your sidebar.

If you want to group your links, then use link categories. These might be ‘My classmates’, ‘Class blogs’, ‘Overseas friends’. You might also include links about your hobbies so you might need a category for ‘Cricket’ or ‘Tasmanian Devils’ or ‘Online Games’.

To create these link categories, go to dashboard> links> Link Categories> put in the name of a category and save.

Back to your dashboard> links> add new link. Fill in the name of the person, then under web address put in the URL of their blog. Remember to include the http:// part. Choose which category you want the link to be under then click add link.

Students

Make sure you have read the information above under blogging and checked out the links to other students regarding commenting.

Write a post, create a video or create a poster about commenting. Might be tips to get more visitors, guidelines for acceptable comments on your blog, examples of good and bad comments – think outside the square.

Most student blogs are created at school, but to personalise your blog, add some posts about topics that are of interest to you – your favourite sports, hobbies, colours, books, games etc. Remember to leave a question at the end of the post as this will invite comments to be left.

Learn some HTML code to include a link in a comment. Mrs Yollis explains this in her post link above. Might be a way to include a link to your blog whenever you leave a comment.

Make sure your blogroll has links to at least ten students – at least five of them who are not your classmates.

Visit some overseas blogs, leave a quality comment which includes some HTML code – a heart, a smiley or your blog URL as an HTML link.

Check out teacher activity 4 on this post to create post categories. These are different to link categories.

Teachers

Make sure you have read the information above under blogging and checked out the class comment links.

Look at your class sidebar. Do you have lots of links for students to visit? Would these be better in a page rather than your sidebar? Check out the subject links on my IT blog and how I have created links to websites.

If your students don’t have their own blogs, but you want them to write posts on the class blog, then add them as users to your blog. Then create a post category or tag for each student. Check out some classes who do this: WPPS Grade 1 use tags, Climb High use categories, Mr Fachet has contributors on this Blogger blog, Shirley has categories, Mrs Lucchesi has categories, Mrs Bliss uses categories.

Notice all posts can be categorized. This makes it easier to find posts on similar topics. Create some post categories on Edublogs by going to your dashboard> posts> new category. Once you have created the categories you need to go back and change it on your posts. To do this simply, go to dashboard> all posts, hover under a post and click on quick edit> change the category and save.

Visit at least ten other class blogs. What widgets do they have that might be suitable for your blog and student age group? eg Shelfari, Wonderopolis Write a post about the widgets you have added and why. Maybe include a poll (perhaps using Poll Daddy) about which widget your visitors enjoy the most.

Have you discussed commenting guidelines with your students? Have you included them as a page on your blog? Do your students’ parents know about your blog? Have they started leaving comments? Write a post directed at your parents. Ask them some questions or ask for some answers eg How are computers and technology used in your job?

Remember if you don’t use Edublogs, check out the links in the ‘Get Help’ section of this blog to find tutorials and support pages for your blogging platform.

Next week we look at adding images, using creative commons and giving attribution. We will also look at Earth Hour 2012.

If I came to your blog and wanted to find a post you had written about your favourite foods or about your digital footprint – how could I find it easily without looking through all your posts?

I would use your categories and tags in your sidebar.

If you want to get to your best friend’s blog and you are not sure of the URL, how could you get there from your own blog? You want to get to your school blog or intranet from home – how can you do it easily?

You could use your blogroll or links in the sidebar.

As you can see from my answers, your sidebar is a very important part of your blog. It helps guide your visitors around your blog. But it can also be a distraction if there are too many games, pets, loud music on the sidebar.

So this week’s challenge relates to your sidebar as well as me finding my way to your community if I were ever to visit.

Students and classes

Activity 1 – Create your blogroll categories

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other student blogs, you might start finding some blogs that you really like. You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL? This is where a blogroll comes in handy.

If you look on the right sidebar of this blog, you will notice I have two subheadings such as:

Blogs to visit

Get Help

These are part of my blogroll. The subheadings or link categories are alphabetical beginning with numbers. So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories.

To create the link category headings, go to your dashboard> links > link category You might include classmates, overseas friends, class blogs, get help and websites.

To make sure these appear on your sidebar, go to dashboard> appearance> widgets and drag the links or blogroll across to the sidebar area.

Activity 2 – Add some links to your blogroll

To add some links such as the challenge blog and your friends’ blogs, go to your dashboard> links> add new. Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL. Be internet savvy and only use first names of students.

You might include at least 10 classmates, some overseas friends you have visited, Student Challenge Blog, Bloggers Cafe, The Edublogger, Help from Edublogs, your class/school blog and/or intranet and websites you often visit.

Here is a post by Sue Waters about creating a blogroll. Follow the instructions for Step 2 in her post.

You are going to need lots of student and class links on your blogroll ready to play a game in a couple of weeks.

Activity 3 – Creating at least 4 post categories

Just to confuse you, there is also another heading called ‘categories’. Categories are like the chapter headings in books while tags are like the index words at the back of a book.

This though, relates to the posts you write about. These categories appear in the header area or at the footer section of each post you write. My post categories for this blog are on the left sidebar and named ‘Challenge Sections.’ My tags are in the right sidebar and named ‘What the posts are about.’

What questions have you got about the part of the country you want to visit?

What do you already know about that place?

Why do you want to visit there in particular?

Write a post leaving some questions for your readers to answer. Think about the countries where our student blogging challenge bloggers are from. They should be able to answer your questions.

Activity 7 – Create a poll

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/4793385/” mce_href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/4793385/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;If you were to visit Australia, where would you most love to go:&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style=”font-size:9px;” mce_style=”font-size:9px;”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/features-surveys/” mce_href=”http://polldaddy.com/features-surveys/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;survey software&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Survey your visitors by asking about where they would like to visit in your country. Use Polldaddy or a similar survey tool and embed the poll in either a post or your sidebar. Once the poll has closed, perhaps you could write a post about the most popular place mentioned in your poll.

My goodness! There is so much excellent blogging happening by the classes and students taking part in this challenge. Remember, if you want me to visit your blog to read your posts, you need to leave a link somewhere in your post linking back to the student blogging challenge blog.

This will make it easier for us to see where we left our last comment.

But before I set the activities,

I want everyone to visit this post

at Mrs Yollis’ blog.

I especially asked Mrs Yollis and her students to create a post about commenting. She also included how to use HTML code when writing comments which will interest our older bloggers. So please visit her first before doing the activities below.

2. Visit and leave comments on at least 10 blogs of other students taking part in the challenge. Look for students your age and who have similar interests to you. That way it is easier to continue a great conversation. When leaving comments try to use some of the HTML code mentioned in Mrs Yollis’ blog. Here are some examples: Mike – teaching about avatars, Shelly – discussion with Mrs Yollis over a 2 month period, Saskia – how the challenge can break down walls

3. Add to your blogroll ready for a game next week. You need at least 15 names on your blogroll.

Remember you can divide these into link categories like I have on the left sidebar of my class blog – challenges, check these passions, get help here, global Australia, global rest of the world, grade 6, 2010 and grade 7, 2010 and finally left this year.

On your edublogs dashboard go to links> link categories to decide how to divide your links. When ready to add the links go to dashboard> links> add new> “Name” put in person’s first name then “Website” URL of their blog then remember to click which category you want them in.

4. Make sure you have a user avatar created. Go to dashboard >users> your avatar and upload one you have created. This could be the same as your blog avatar or you might create a different one. Then whenever you leave a comment on someone’s blog, this avatar will show.

Also make sure in users >your profile, you have a name displayed publicly as and that you have your blog URL on the line website. The owner of the blog where you leave a comment now only has to click on either your name or your avatar and it should take them to your blog.

Students over 13 might also want to visit gravatar where you can upload a globally recognized avatar to use when leaving a comment on any blogging platform whether it be edublogs, wordpress, blogspot etc.

5. Write a post or leave a comment explaining how a blog could be improved. As you visit many blogs to read posts, you start to see some really great blogs that are designed well, don’t distract you from reading and generally make you want to visit again. Write a post about what you consider is a great blog and use some examples from where you have visited. You might also want to mention the things that put you off visiting a blog regularly. This idea was from Poisonious Inspiration.

6.Find three bloggers (not in your school!) whose work you enjoy and add them to your blogroll. Write a post introducing them to your readers and sharing your favorite article from each blog. This idea was from Denise.

7. Also, while it is encouraging to receive comments… is there room for an “Introducing one of my commenters” posts? To present it a little bit like reflective listener… this is____ from ___. His/her comment helped me because _____. Maybe then adding to the blog roll…? This idea is from declairing (Mrs Bee)

8. Write a post for Blog Action Day 2010 which is all about water. See separate post I have written for this activity.

So you have now visited lots of blogs and there are some that you want to visit all the time. How can you do this easily?

One option is to subscribe to that blog’s posts.

You can subscribe by email – every time a new post is written you will be sent an email telling you about it, so you can visit and read the post and leave a comment.

You can subscribe by using a reader or personalised homepage like Google Reader, Pageflakes, Yahoo Pipes, Netvibes – this time when a post is written it will be added to your reader or homepage – you will need to visit often to see if there are any new posts from your friends.

On the top right corner of this blog you will see the orange button which is for the RSS feeds using a reader and you will also see the Feedburner service for email subscribers. On your meta widget on your sidebar there is usually a post/entries RSS feed and a Comment RSS feed which can be used as well.

Second option is to have a link to your favourite blogs on your blogroll. You should have done this activity a couple of weeks ago.

Activities for this week:

Make sure your meta widget is visible on your blog so your readers can subscribe from there.

On your blog, add a Feedburner subscribe by email and reader widget. Or leave a note in a text box telling your readers to subscribe using the meta widget RSS posts. You will need to have a Google account to use these – so check with your parents first.

Subscribe by email to at least three blogs you want to read all the time. If under 13, you will need to just add the URLs to your blogroll.

Count out three – click on a blog on your blogroll (1), now click on a blog from their blogroll (2) and finally click on a blog from that blogroll (3) – leave a comment on a post at this blog. Do this activity at least three times and write a post saying which blogs you visited and what posts you left a comment on. Why did you choose that post?

Write a post about how you can attract readers to your blog. If you have been blogging for a while, write a set of tips for new bloggers about attracting a world wide audience.

Still more time, write a post of your choice – music, sport, holidays etc Include an image with attribution.

I hope you have all been visiting other class and student blogs over the last few weeks. If you haven’t, then please make sure you have visited some during the next week. We have lots of teachers visiting student blogs to leave comments over this month and I noticed an excellent conversation happening between Mrs Yollis and Shelly. Check it out here!

Another great conversation through comments is between Saskia and her visitors, who have been students, teachers, uni lecturers. Check it out here!

Clare has responded to another teacher’s post, by writing her own and quoting some parts of the original post by Mr Watt. Check it out here! Again another fantastic conversation happening through comments.

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other blogs and looking at the March 2010 student list to find students with similar interests, you might start finding some blogs that you really like. You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL? This is where a blogroll comes in handy.

If you look near the bottom on the sidebar of this blog, you will notice I have certain subheadings such as:

blogs to visit

get help

These are part of my blogroll. Notice the subheadings or link categories are alphabetical beginning with numbers. So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories.

If using Edublogs, to create the link category headings, go to links > link category To add some links such as this blog and your friends blogs, go to links>add new. Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL.

Just to confuse you and your teacher, there is also another heading called ‘categories’. This though, relates to the posts you write about. These categories appear in the header area or at the footer section of your post.

What are your posts mainly about?

family and friends

schoolwork

my interests

my future

You might use these as post categories. If using Edublogs, to set them up from your dashboard go to posts>categories. Why are categories and tags important when writing your posts? See if you can find out that answer over the next week.

You will notice the categories I have used for this blog are:

Information

March 2010

Type of challenge

Beginner student

Class

Commenter

Teacher

Veteran student

Visit these

Your challenges this week

Add at least 10 blogs to your blog roll. Make sure you have at least two different link categories.

If you have taken part in a previous challenge, you also need to write a post recommending at least 5 blogs you think students and classes should add to their blogroll. Remember to give reasons why that blog should be added.

When writing posts, begin adding categories. You should only have a few of these – it is like the chapter heading of a book. Go back to your previous posts and change the category. If writing a post for the challenge, perhaps a category ‘challenge March 2010′ would be useful.

If you already have categories organized for your blog, write a post explaining why you chose those particular categories.

Make sure you have a user avatar created. Go to dashboard >users> your avatar and upload one you have created. This could be the same as your blog avatar or you might create a different one. Then whenever you leave a comment on someone’s blog, this avatar will show. Also make sure in users >your profile, you have a name displayed publicly as and that you have your blog URL on the line website. The owner of the blog where you leave a comment now only has to click on either your name or your avatar and it should take them to your blog.

If you still have lots of time to do some more challenges, then visit the blog run by last year’s participants. Leave some comments on the posts and perhaps you will also find some other links for your blogroll. Check out the categories used on this blog in their blog roll.